2014 Elections: The Waves of Change?

2014 Elections: The Waves of Change?

Mathew Idiculla

Although the public discourse surrounding the 2014 general elections seems to be centered on the effects of a “Modi Wave”, Mathew Idiculla stresses the need to remember that elections in India are ultimately a multi-polar contest fought over varied issues.

Mathew Idiculla is a graduate fellow at
the Law, Governance and Development Initiative in the School of Policy
and Governance at Azim Premji University, Bangalore.

That 2014
would be a year of change seems inevitable. Whichever political
formation wins the upcoming national elections, India will soon have a
new Prime Minister after nearly a decade under Manmohan Singh. But
beyond a mere change of guard,
this election has the potential to alter the political and economic
trajectory of India. This is not merely because Congress is projected to
get one of its lowest ever tallies as per most opinion polls, but also
because its chief challenger seems to embody a thought quite different
from that held by all previous prime ministers.

2014 could
very well be remembered with other landmark years in India’s political
history- 1967, when Congress domination ended as it lost power in half
the states; 1977, when for the first time Congress was unseated from
power at the centre
and 1984, when Congress won its highest vote share ever and had for the
last time a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family as the Prime Minster. In
terms of economic policy, 1991 saw a major policy shift in India with
the opening of the markets which was further taken forward by the BJP
led NDA government. However, since 2004, India has followed an
“inclusive growth” model which sought to go beyond economic growth and
focused on delivering social welfare by enacting various socio-economic rights. But with economic growth lowering
to 5.5 per cent this year and rising inflation, the viability of this
model is under the scanner and the policy priorities of the next
government could hence undergo a major shift.

National
Elections are often, but not always, fought on certain big issues. 1977
was in many ways a referendum on the Emergency, 1989 was mainly fought
over the corruption allegations against the Rajiv Gandhi government and
2004, arguably on whether India was shining. In 2014, beyond the
constant reference to a “Modi Wave” supposedly sweeping the country, no
major issues seems to dominate public discourse. Nevertheless,
“development”, “good governance” and “empowerment” seems to have become
common references in the political lexicon of 2014 elections. In many
ways, both NarendraModi and Rahul Gandhi (albeit less successfully) are
positioning themselves as change agents trying to bring in a new
language of politics.

BJP’s appeal
to the voters has been primarily on two fronts- that the
corruption-ridden UPA government has ruined India and that Mr. Modi,
with proven administrative credentials, can deliver India to prosperity.
The party, which still has problems of geographic reach, is clearly
hoping that this election will be a “wave election”centered on Modi,
like the 1971 election in which Indira Gandhi directly appealed to the
masses with her populist rhetoric. The Congress is less clear on its
messaging, but seems to be promoting its record in delivering “growth
with social justice” and is pitching Rahul Gandhi as someone who wants
to take this process of empowerment to the next level. The Left has got a
few regional parties together in an arrangement which is asking for
alternative economic policies and also a bigger role for the state
governments vice-vie the centre.
The latest kid in the block, the Aam Aadmi Party, has continued its
anti-establishment style politics by focusing on how both national
parties are under the control of Big Business.

The Multi-party system and Elections 2014While the rise of Modi at the national stage-whether achieved
by a carefully calibrated media strategy or due to genuine groundswell-
cannot be denied, it seems to cloud out the multifarious voices that
make up Indian politics. In viewing
Modi’s popularity as an unstoppable wave or tsunami, there is a danger
of missing out many parallel political mobilizations and the multiple
possibilities that the Indian electoral minefield offers.

Despite the fact that India follows a first-past-the-post electoral system that favours bigger parties,the
truth is that our party system has increasingly become more fragmented.
The number of parties contesting the elections has increased from 33 in
1984 to 230 in 2004 and to 363 in 2009. A more accurate measure of
increasing party fragmentation is an index that political scientists
use-Effective Number of Parties (ENP). The ENP measures the actual level
of competition that exists in each constituency based on the vote share
that each party gets. Even in these terms, the party fragmentation has
increased with the effective number of parties increasing from being
4.53 in 1952 to 7.98 in 2009 (Shridharan, 2011).

While
everyone seems to accept the importance of alliances (no party has
achieved a majority in the seven elections since 1989), due to three
stable coalition governments over the last 15 years, elections are now
increasingly perceived to have become bipolar.
But an analysis of the ENP numbers reveals otherwise. Since 1999,
though India had stable coalition governments in place, the ENP increased
from 6.74 in 1999 to 7.60 in 2004 to 7.98 in 2009. This means that the
general elections are now essentially fought by around 7-8 major parties
and not just the 2 big national players.

Even if we consider the combined vote share of BJP and Congress in the same period, the story of vote consolidation by the big national parties
rings hollow. The combined vote share of BJP and Congress put together
has been declining from 52.1 in 1999 to 48.6 in 2004 to 47.4 in 2009
(Shridharan, 2011). The decline in vote share might be partly explained
by the ability of the national parties to enter into pre-poll alliances.
Even then, these figures reveal that Indian politics is much too
diverse to be captured by any single phenomenon.Whether
any form of “wave” can reverse this trend remains to be seen. A wave
could stagger this trend, but to substantially reverse it would be
difficult. Though political parties have now learned the trick to
maintain durable coalitions, it would still be premature to suggest that
the 2000s and 2010s represent an era beyond the electoral fragmentation of the 1990s.

The Issues that MatterBut how do the voters see this election? Do they view it merely
as a Modi-versus-Rahul personality contest as the mainstream media
seems to be projecting it? Or are they more concerned with the local
issues of their constituency?

The Center
for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, with
the help of the Lok Foundation, recently ran a poll survey
on the social attitudes in India with 68,500 respondents across 24
states. Interestingly, it found that issues concerning the economy had
the largest resonance among the people. When asked to pick the single
most important issue (among a list of 8 provided) that will determine
their voting choice, economic growth
emerged as the number one issue with a 25 % vote share. It was followed
by corruption (21%) and inflation (18%). Interestingly, issues related
to identity ranked last with only 3% of the people selecting it as the
most prominent issue.

These figures may tempt analysts to jump to the conclusion that India is now heading for
a post-identity based polity in which issues of caste and community no
longer matter. However, such surveys need to be read with caution,
especially when it is commonly acknowledged that in surveys, people tend
to give the answer that they believe the surveyor wants to hear rather
than what they actually believe. Also, when the same survey
asked the question about caste indirectly, 57% admitted to being
uncomfortable with the idea of someone from another caste being their
elected representative.

It is
actually quite surprising that an abstract idea like economic growth
emerged as the most important issue for the voters. But then, topics
like food, housing, water, health or education were never part of the
survey list. Whether voters ultimately vote on the basis of local
issues that matter to them in their daily lives or larger national
issues is something that needs to be further examined.

The question
of local versus national is interestingly being played out in the
election at Bangalore South constituency between Infosys CEO turned
Congress politician Nandan Nilekani and BJP general secretary Ananth
Kumar. Ironically, it is the debutant
Nilekani, who just finished a 5 year stint in Delhi as UIDAI chairman,
who is talking about Bangalore’s local problems, whereas the 5-time MP
of the city is fighting the elections by attacking the central
government and asking for a vote in Modi’s name. The reasons for such
electoral positioning seems obvious- Nilekani does not want the
controversies of the UPA government to affect his campaign while Kumar
does not have enough to show for his record as an MP and hence seems to
be banking on the Modi “wave”. So, this election promises to be an
interesting contest where local, state and national issues compete with
each other and ultimately becomes intertwined in determining the fate of
the biggest electoral battle in the world.

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Sridharan, E (2011) “The Party System” in Jayal, Niraja Gopal, and PratapBhanu Mehta The Oxford companion to politics in India, Oxford University Press.